FriendOfDeSoto

@FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is gold investing a scam?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes and no. If you order your “gold kit” off of an ad aimed at boomers worried about losing their houses, it is probably scammy.

  If you’re very rich and worried, you could stash away a bit of bullion at your home. You’ll have other things of value you could trade on the black market of total societal collapse before you’d need to tap into that resource. If you’re not very rich, a gold bar is not going to do you much good because it’s a big chunk of change tied up in one item. You’re more likely to need smaller denominations, like coins or rings, to pay for stuff in the apocalypse. Or you need to learn to smelt metal. The scam of it all is that people with a financial interest will advertize gold as the safe resource in times of high perceived crisis when the price of gold is already high or rising. It makes much more sense financially to watch the market and buy when it’s down.

  Gold is also something that needs the economy to come back before you ran out of other stuff to barter with. If our apocalyptical total collapse lasts a long time, gold will not be as valuable as drinking water, food, or shelter. Smokes (incl. vape juice) and booze might be more useful for a longer time.

  I’m not rich and I’d sooner go down the prepper route than buying gold.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Like some of the other commenters here, I would not be surprised if that were so. Because racism.

  However, I wonder if the premise of your question is true. Are there really no stories about Mexicans in fairy tale Europe? Or Japanese at the court of King Arthur? Or would they have you justify it more than a European in Wakanda? I’m sure Hollywood would care less about these stories but does that mean no one cares? I’m not sure. And since I’m not reading a lot of Mexican or Japanese authors I can only speculate.

  The allure of stories like these is the unknown factor, the exotic, the strange. Thanks to centuries of colonization of the rest of the world, Europe is not exactly unknown or considered to be an exotic place in the rest of the world. This might contribute to a cultural bias.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it confirmed that The Doctor we'll be seeing in Academy is NOT the one from "Living Witness"?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This has to be in the top 5 of story threads they should pick up again in any show. Conspiracy bugs are on one. Then Living Witness backup doc. What’s the gamma quad like post dominion? Maybe followed by Moriarty with a mobile emitter. Etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[The New Republic] Arrest Mark Zuckerberg for Child Endangerment: Shocking new revelations about Instagram in a lawsuit against social media companies should pave the way for an ambitious prosecutor to file criminal charges.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You want the current laws applied. I say the current laws are not good enough to get anybody convicted, no matter how rich they are. And since I’d much prefer to live in a world where I’m wrong, let’s stop arguing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[The New Republic] Arrest Mark Zuckerberg for Child Endangerment: Shocking new revelations about Instagram in a lawsuit against social media companies should pave the way for an ambitious prosecutor to file criminal charges.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Americans, as a general population, don’t give a shit about Myanmar, may not know it even exists.

  I would say that’s irrelevant for the crimes committed. And not just Americans would struggle to find Myanmar on a map. Or really care what’s going on there unless it’s rooting out phishing farms using abducted foreigners.

  I commend your view on the matter, that when it comes to their children they will do something. That may turn out to be true. However, that’s not going to be enough to get anyone at meta convicted under the current laws. They are running under a cover of diffuse authority and supervision internally and section 230 externally. Abhorent drug pusher comments are not admissions of guilt. They have good lawyers. We need new laws, more regulation, and fines that make Wall Street worried.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[The New Republic] Arrest Mark Zuckerberg for Child Endangerment: Shocking new revelations about Instagram in a lawsuit against social media companies should pave the way for an ambitious prosecutor to file criminal charges.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If these things were clean cut, they would have been dragged to court already many times over. For messing with teenage girls for a laugh 10 years ago. For tacitly approving genocide in Myanmar. For cheating on their video views during the highly successful pivot to video. A good lawyer will get them out of this one too with but a slap on the wrist. They exist in a gray zone where they can fuck up as much as they want to without having to fear great consequences. Vote for politicians who want to regulate these companies more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When the AI bubble bursts..⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If it bursts we’ll get a lot of data centers looking for something to do. And RAM prices will come down but … What’s causing the bottle neck right now is that your average RAM factory needs a couple of years from designed to built to working. So the supply is limited right now while the demand is high. While us end users can’t use the data center gear, in a pinch they could use ours. So the bottle neck gets tighter. So if the bubble collapses, supply will increase and that will bring prices down. If it bursts about two years from now, all the hastily built RAM factories will churn out cheap RAM. But none of this is guaranteed, not the busting and not the dead cheap prices. Because the demand for RAM will not drop off a cliff, it will most likely decrease slowly. All this processing power in post-burst idle data centers will find a way to be used - with what I do not know. There will still be a higher demand for RAM compared to pre-ChatGPT times. So RAM will not flood the market, we will just return to a relative equilibrium of the market.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Pixelfed sawing off the branch that the Fediverse is sitting on?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The thought behind the post is worthwhile to ponder and discuss.

  Personally, I don’t think it’s as dire as the text makes it seem. The speculation that a steadfast refusal of showing text only on PF might lead the AP protocol guardians to include a dummy pic in every post seems to me to be in the “possible but outlandish” category.

  If the premise of AP was that every user should be able to see everything everywhere then defederating from certain instances shouldn’t be possible. But that’s a feature, not a bug.

  The tree of the fediverse is big and nobody needs to saw off any branches. A picture only branch can sit next to a hypothetical text only one. I can see an argument that newbies to those particular branches could be more explicitly made aware of the filtering they will experience. While I was reading the text about the users who thought they saw everything from Mastodon on PF, my first thought was: this strains credulity. But then again, users are dumb. I hadn’t realized for a while that shared posts don’t show up in my PF feed on the app either.

  I don’t think anybody could become too big for their breeches on the fediverse because the fediverse is in no position to challenge the incumbent corporate platforms. Don’t get me wrong, I love it here and on Mastodon (and on PF). But if you come from those polished centrally organized platforms and you’re not willing to invest at least a little bit of time into learning how federating works (also refer to users are dumb above), you’ll already be disappointed and put off before you realize you now need to also become your own algorithm. The threat scenario that PF could become so big that it can dictate protocol also presupposes that AP is the protocol that will endure forever. And with AT it already has a competitor waiting in the wings. As I said up top, the thought about how one dominating branch could damage the whole tree is worthwhile. But in a dramatic shift from this metaphor: we are in no position to have to cross this bridge any time soon.

  Another reason why PF won’t be getting out the chainsaw is its usability. It’s only great for looking at pictures. It’s terrible for having discussions about them unless you only use the website. I’m using the Android app and it’s not great. Features came and went. The UI leaves a lot to be desired for me. It currently feels a bit abandoned because Dansup is more preoccupied with challenging TikTok. I still like PF because I go there just to look at pictures. I go to Mastodon for memes and dry remarks. And I don’t feel like I’m breaking the protocol.

  This image may be a bit wonky but convenience stores don’t go out of business just because 24h supercenters exist. They both exchange ice cream for money but one of them has a bigger selection of flavors. PF is 7/11, Mastodon is Walmart.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How will the Military be after this mess with Trump?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, the introduction of an individual, ethical “veto” came after the formation of national militaries like we know them today. There is built in tension to introduce a right to disobey into a system that otherwise demands obedience to function. It’s also hard to grasp as a concept even for the better educated. It’s fucked up. These days I’m thinking more and more about the adage that morale is something you need to be able to afford. And I understand every sergeant who feels like they don’t have any morale money to spend when ordered, say, to fire on shipwrecked drug smugglers. You piss off your boss and before you know it you’re dishonorably discharged back to the poverty stricken area you tried to get away from. Also, left-leaning liberals are a minority in a profession that practices how to kill people. There is so much gray there.

  I say I understand the hypothetical sergeant in their moral life dilemma. As far as my respect is concerned, I can be totally black and white about this though.

  The pessimistic take is none of this will matter because the US is moving further away from its constitutional order into a 21st century version of fascism. The military will be ridden of the morale “veto” and sworn to obey the leader no matter what. The optimistic take sees the current cult/fascistoid leadership edged out in 3-7 years and we will mostly see the homeopathic punishment I mentioned before. If we’re lucky, a tightening of the rules under which circumstances and with whose authority military units of any kind can be mobilized in peacetime within the US.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does no one in the bible have a last name?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  These names tend to be attached to them after the fact. I imagine there were a few Leonardos or Johannesses roaming about at their time so much like Alexander became The Great to set him apart from all other Alexanders, these names are scribes’ and historians’ shorthand to make clear which Leo or Joe you were talking about. And a few centuries of historical telephone later they seem to fit perfectly in our first name/last name system. Which in western Europe really only became officially standardized with the Code Civil from our friend Napoleon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does no one in the bible have a last name?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Or where they were from: da Vinci, Gutenberg. The Bible also doesn’t have a lot of action in China where last names were a thing before Jesus.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How will the Military be after this mess with Trump?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Soldiers have the right and the duty to resist illegal orders. I reserve respect for those who abide by that. Blind respect leads to blind eyes to when they eff up. And this American blind respect for active service members is so paradoxical in the face of how most veterans get treated.

  The US military has survived the hot phase of the Korean War, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. And it probably should have taken more damage as an institution after each of these. It will survive 47 as well. Long drawn out procedures will meter out homeopathic doses of wrist slaps for most involved minus a handful of high profile scapegoats.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do people know what the Streisand effect was about?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Somebody took shots from the air of her home. She tried to get them removed from the public sphere. That caused headlines and as a result more people saw them attached to these news stories than ever would have if she hadn’t made an issue out of it.

  Didn’t google, didn’t read the other comments.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I watch the first Star Trek Discovery episode, I didn't like it.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  While I think of all non-animated Trek shows, DS9 had the best first season, it still contains a lot of dogs. Move along home, anyone? My point is first seasons are rough. Discovery gets better in S2. I would watch it that far before you start SNW because it’s basically the backdoor pilot for that show.

  I don’t think a mutinous commander is that outrageous a plot line in a universe where Riker once had Q powers, Janeway had warp 10 lizard babies with her pilot, Sisko poisoning a planet’s atmosphere on purpose, or where a man like Jonathan Archer was made captain of anything.

  Is Disco the best Trek show? I don’t think so. I think overall it’s better than PIC though. So if you have suffered through that, you stand a good chance of being more delighted by Disco.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would it be weird of me to send friend requests to old friends I knew in school 15 years ago?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think it would be weird. It’s up to them if they accept or not. I would just suggest you make parallel plans as well to meet new people. A hobby group, a book club, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do cops and soldiers get more media attention than the average citizen?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think there are two general (human) media preferences at work: “if it bleeds, it ledes” superceded by which deaths are more extraordinary. So soldiers murdered in peacetime is noteworthy. They could’ve become accountants but chose a career where there is a real and high risk of death. Btw I fear it’s that death math that made medical professionals drop out of noteworthiness post-pandy, i.e. the threat is real but the risk has gone down again. I think children dying generally of tragic circumstances will be noteworthy. Nurses contracting AIDS or non-famous people dying of natural causes become less noteworthy. And I use noteworthy here as what they chose to cover in their newsrooms. They have financial interests to consider as well, which brings us back to “if it bleeds.”

  The American filter generally erases many “mundane” gun deaths from visibility. Either people are so numb it doesn’t register as the tragedy that it is or it doesn’t get covered. There are plenty of places on earth where a single gunshot fired in anger that would make headlines.

  There is a worldwide blindness to traffic deaths. We have just accepted that this is how many people die. So if something more interesting happens elsewhere, the t-boned accountant on the way to Walmart just gets dropped.

  So there are a number of factors that influence what makes the news or not. The list goes on.

  I would also say that media coverage is not prescriptive for who you should feel empathy for. We cannot all feel all the tragedies on this planet at once. We’d go mad. You pick and choose as a defense mechanism. So if you don’t feel that much empathy for these national guardsmen, I kind of get it. If you don’t like how much media coverage it’s getting, I can definitely understand that. The problem is just that when you say this out loud you open yourself up to criticism, like: you don’t feel for the people who died while sworn to defend your freedom! What about children and nurses? That’s just whataboutism! Etc. So I would suggest you follow your own heart and change your media consumption when it bothers you. Or you’ll end up in a culture war debate about whose lives matter more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You don’t show him the stupidity of his ways by sleeping with that lady. You either find a way to confront him about that. Or you unattach yourself from this toxic person by finding other, better friends. Frankly, I would give him a piece of my mind and then find other friends anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there an optimal home/apartment size that most people would be happy with?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think I’m leaning too far out this window when I say: no, there isn’t an optimal size. It depends on so many factors. How many people? Is this urban or rural? What’s there neighborhood like? Facilities, public transport, doctors, grocery stores, etc.? What’s the crime rate like? How long is the commute to work? People have different priorities and make different choices as a result.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk Had Grok Rewrite Wikipedia. It Calls Hitler “The Führer.”⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not that clear really. His official titles would’ve been president and chancellor and he only got one of those in a manner the Weimar constitution legally envisioned. So the system, by which we would decide what an official title is today, was abused and then suspended all together. The title “der Führer” was basically a google translate from “il duce” in Italy and is not entirely honorific because he was leader of the Nazi party first. And he continues to be referred to by this semi-unofficial, semi-honorific title even in history books today and they don’t always bother to disambiguate or add that they mean it sarcastically. So while Grok should be shot into space. And Nazi saluting Melon Usk deserves to be under this much scrutiny and more and can otherwise go eff himself as far as I’m concerned. The Ockham’s razor for this gaff tells me the LLM just regurgitated book knowledge and nobody bothered to filter this with 2025 sensibilities. Not great but also more of a storm in a teacup. This won’t make the top ten of atrocious things coming from the Melon.

  I was also looking for a word other than ‘honorific.’ I find it has a positive connotation and should not apply to the titles of such infamous individuals as Hitler or Mussolini. But I could not come up with anything snappy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In the future, there will be a sad scene of widow watching AI porn of their dead spouse⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Is it porn the deceased spouse created or is it porn the widow created with the deceased husband’s likeness? And which would indeed be sadder?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could another country like Great Britain Release the Full Epstein files?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you are referring to the UK government, I’m going to guess no. They either don’t have the full version or they won’t be interested in releasing the files themselves. The brother of the current pointy hat wearer is up to his non-sweaty elbows in this mess and they don’t want to have to deal with this and damage the monarchy further.

  If you’re referring to a UK publication, they will probably not be able to release the full dossier. They would have to carefully tread around any UK citizen or noble d-head involved because they don’t want to be knee deep in defamation lawsuits.

  What we need is a country that no one thinks they’re biased or has an agenda or much to lose under a 250,000 percent US tariff. So not Russia or Venezuela. Or China or Iraq or Afghanistan or Canada or Denmark … Maybe Vanuatu will do. The only problem is that even if the entire dossier was accurate and unedited, you won’t have to wait long until reasonable doubt gets injected into the public debate that it was doctored before release. The effect of the release will not lead to immediate resignations, firings, arrests, etc.

  I would guess that leading English speaking newsrooms probably have access to enough of it already and that what’s there is not enough for a spectacular release. And a possible kill order of the pedophile in prison will probably not have left a paper trail. And it will not clearly say Trump or Bubba raped teenagers although the smoke around the fire will be tough to ignore. Circumstantial evidence is not the same as proof.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨So now that it's that time of year again in the US, what are some tips and tricks for dealing with that one relative who goes on about the same bullshit for hours and won't shut the fuck up?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Set alarms on your phone and pretend it’s phone calls from work, a friend in need, etc. Go hide in there bathroom and take a ten minute break.

  Do you have allies in the family? Make a pact to take turns. Get them to lure you away on a pretense. Go help clean the kitchen.

  If you can’t wiggle free, give yourself permission to switch off. You don’t have to fight every battle, you don’t need to set everything right. It’s amazing how long you can keep a conversation going if all you do is repeat the last thing they said to you back at them but you raise your tone at the end to turn it into a question. Make plans on how to compensate yourself for enduring this shit. Pat yourself on the back for maintaining peace in the face of adversity.

  Nothing bores people more than showing them “a funny video” on YouTube. Or some really boring vacation pictures. Or have a non-controversial topic of your own and stubbornly steer conversation that way. Tell a story with no point. If you’re sitting in something comfy, like an armchair, pretend to fall asleep because you worked so hard. Praise the food and how good it was every time you’re biting your tongue and you really want to say fuck you.

  It’s family, it’s the holidays. I’m not saying you should swallow all bullshit. But raise the bar in the interest of family peace. And remember that folks will blame the loudmouths, the ones who raised their voice more than necessary, and not the quiet one for any fracas.

  None of these strategies will work by themselves. It’s the mix that does it. It’s better to go into the situation looking at it like a game you play. Not like: fuck! Uncle Bob is going to annoy me again. You have your armor on and uncle Bob can’t do shit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What OS does the Batcomputer use?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That release was batshit if you ask me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What OS does the Batcomputer use?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  BatOS obvs

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Marx was alive during the Cold War and beyond, how would he react to the communist states that rose to power? Would he approve or disapprove of them?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, because my point is that your point doesn’t make sense.

  That’s a remarkable statement in the context of a hypothetical, counterfactual scenario where we are attempting to interpret the possible thinking of a long deceased man displaced in time for the benefit of said scenario.

  You may disagree with me. You haven’t changed my mind either. So let’s leave it at that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Marx was alive during the Cold War and beyond, how would he react to the communist states that rose to power? Would he approve or disapprove of them?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re citing my text but cutting off just before the point I was trying to make. I think be would still side with the people who claim to follow his ideology (yes, piss poor efforts objectively speaking but that’s irrelevant to him because he would prefer them over the folks entrenched in capitalism on the other side).

  Ideologs are a dangerous breed because they are surprisingly flexible under realpolitik conditions when the alternative is having to admit defeat. Or in Marx’s case admitting that his ideas didn’t work or the fact that they didn’t work as intended cost the lives of millions. Surely he wouldn’t like Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China and well apoortioned crticism thereof (or of the GDR or wherever) would have eventually spent his good will capital (pun intended) with the local leadership and he would end up in a gulag or erased from history. Karl-Marx-Stadt would have been renamed sooner.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Trump doesn’t care about peace. Trump cares about Trump. And his mindset is reality television. He wants to be in the headlines. Hero or heel, he does not care.

  Obama got the Nobel. That stings. He wants one so he can “equal” if not best the accomplishments of Obama, who openly mocked him during that White House “comedy” press gala. That personal vendetta drives him.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Marx was alive during the Cold War and beyond, how would he react to the communist states that rose to power? Would he approve or disapprove of them?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think if he were honest with himself he would see that what he got wasn’t what he had envisioned in any of the countries that claimed to be communist/socialist. But they were his team so he would publicly support them. You can sell his stance as an evolvement of the theory rather than admitting mistakes. Not too dissimilar from the way the PRC sells its version of communism to its people: communism “with Chinese characteristics.”

  Chances are though that he would have perished in one of the purges happening in whichever communist country he would have chosen to reside in. He would have enough clout to niggle at leadership openly about stuff going wrong and eventually be would deliver the straw that broke his camel’s back. He would be mind-holed and his legacy rectified so he wouldn’t be the lighthouse of the movement that he could only become because he died early. And he didn’t starve millions. And communism would become the thing created by the people through an arduous march and not a system dreamed up by some German philosophers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Maybe most of society doesn't have much critical thinking because those who get those "critical thinking" genes go crazy from overthinking things and therefore fail to pass on the genes.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think this is genetic though. Critical thinking is something you should learn how to do. It’s a failure due to chronic underfunding in education.

  I do agree with you that the people who can do it, often despair and withdraw from public discourse out of frustration. But they could be making babies like rabbits at the same time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK about the French Republican Calendar⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it would be fair to highlight that this was revolutionary France’ brainchild. It is a republic today as well but they’ve gone back and forth on that one a bit in the last two centuries.